Dear Progressive Reader,
Happy May Day!
On this day, one hundred thirty-five years ago, more than 80,000 workers speaking twenty different languages marched through the streets of Chicago, calling for “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will.” More than 300,000 workers in 13,000 different businesses across the United States would walk off their jobs that day to call for recognition of their rights as human beings.
Today, in a pandemic-affected world, those rights remain in contention. As Christopher Cook reports this week, “Despite growing pressure from labor groups and worker advocates on Capitol Hill, the Biden Administration continues to delay an emergency COVID-19 worker safety protection that was supposed to launch March 15—and it’s still unclear when (or even if) the measure will be enacted.” UPDATE: Shortly after The Progressive published Cook's article, OSHA announced it was sending a draft temporary emergency standard to the Office of Management and Budget for review, this after significant pressure from Democratic members of Congress in a letter to the President.
President Joe Biden celebrated his first hundred days in office this week with a televised address to Congress. While he has achieved many goals, others remain elusive. As Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies noted last week, “Biden took office promising a new era of U.S. international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups, and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war.” And as the United States begins a long-awaited troop withdrawal from Afghanistan (this country’s longest war), Davies also interviews former U.N. diplomat and peace activist Denis Halliday on the impact of U.S. sanctions on countries from Iraq and Iran to Cuba and Venezuela. “We kill people with sanctions. Sanctions are not a substitute for war—they are a form of warfare,” says Halliday.
Also this week, Michael J. Moore, an inmate in a prison in the State of Washington, writes, “As someone who’s spent the better part of my life contributing to statistics [as one of the seven out of every 1000 U.S. citizens who are incarcerated], my story sheds some light on the mystery of why and how the [Department of Corrections] has failed so miserably to accomplish its mission to ‘positively change lives.’ The answer is simple, yet sinister: Isolation discourages reform.” And Paul Buhle provides a review of the posthumous memoir by legendary defense lawyer and human rights activist Michael Ratner, whose four basic principles of legal work included the call to “Use cases to publicize a radical critique of U.S. policy and to promote revolutionary transformation.”
May 3 is the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of a new concept in news broadcasting, the program “All Things Considered” on National Public Radio. The program was conceived by Bill Siemering, who also wrote NPR’s first mission statement. As Siemering told me in an interview for The Progressive in 2017, “Diversity . . . is reiterated throughout that mission statement about celebrating differences with joy and respecting the plurality of the country.” The goal of public radio, Siemering told me, was to “encourage a sense of active, constructive participation, rather than apathetic helplessness.” That is certainly a welcome antidote to much of today’s rightwing media programming.
Last weekend, another radio legend, Bob Fass of Pacifica Radio passed away at the age of 87. Fass opened the microphone in New York’s WBAI to the voices of Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, and members of the Yippies including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. But his very first guest on-air was Paul Krassner, founder and editor of The Realist, who is credited with inventing the name “Yippie.”
April 28 marked the anniversary of the murder of engineer Ben Linder, killed by U.S.-funded contra rebels in Nicaragua in 1987. As I wrote on the thirtieth anniversary of Linder’s death, “Today Ben Linder is remembered as a hero who gave his life to help the everyday people of Nicaragua rebuild.” As Linder once wrote in a letter to a friend, “Anything you can do needs to be done, so pick up the tool of your choice and get started.”
Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
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